Thursday, December 13, 2012

Amusingly -- but for the fact that innocent people minding their own business
will be forced to make the payments -- California leftists are caught holding a blatant double standard regarding loans.

Perhaps the best example of the [Capital Appreciation Bond] issue
is suburban San Diego's Poway Unified School District, which borrowed a little
more than $100 million. But "debt service will be almost $1 billion,"
[California State Treasurer Bill] Lockyer says. "So, over nine times [the] amount of
the borrowing. There are worse ones, but that's pretty bad."

That's right, school districts all over California are awash in incredible debt
that NPR ironically likens to (the
left-wing stereotype of) "payday loans" that so many Californians got
worked up about this time last year. Thomas Sowell thoroughly debunked that
stereotype, but let's grant it for a moment, for the sake of argument. This
huge mess is plainly made possible by government "oversight" of the financial
sector, promoted by government "concern" about education, and directly caused
by government officials running schools that they ought not be running. What
does it say about leftists (and other fans of the government running
everything) that they chose to go after payday lenders, while, at best,
ignoring this real problem?

Apparently, by the left's lights,
someone being held accountable for paying back a loan at some outlandish rate
of interest is unacceptable, unless he is forced to by the government. It's as
if government meddling is a kind of holy water that purifies almost
anything, exempting it from critical examination. That's how mindless (and
anti-mind) the left has become.